Caucasia Notes

Certainly all of the main characters in 'Caucasia' struggle with the push and pull of embodying the stereotypes of the dominant group and aspiring to the oppressor's way of life. While the struggle isn't manifested within herself, even Sandy is traumatized as this dynamic pulls apart her family.

The "existential experience" of Deck is perhaps the most obvious place where Freire's concept is at work. Even as a young boy, we discover Deck is more alienated than most of his peers. "he was always a bit of a loner, you know. Preaching to us about how he was going to make it out", says his childhoof friend Tony (p. 90).

This intense "Alienation" is described by Freire as the pre-condition for this "aspiration" to take hold. And Deck, who at his worst can be an "overintellectualized creep" (p. 394) who doesn't care enough to undertake the "REAL project" of finding his daughter - is the most alienated character in the novel in that he never seems to succeed in his relationships with even those that are closest to him.

It becomes clear that as a young man, Deck did go through a long period of yearning to be "resemble the oppressor" - even at the "cost" of rejecting his own neighborhood and family. Sandy's memories of Deck at Harvard present him as someone who is desperately trying to fit and adopt the manners and attitudes of his privileged peers. This student-Deck is a "nervous" "ghost" in a Herringbone jacket (pp. 33-35) - intensely interested in great minds of the priveleged Canon. One is led to imagine this had something to do with sparking his interest in Sandy. She is rejected by and rejects her peers. And as he does the same they are able to connect in this lonely space and find comfort and love in one another.

By the time Birdie is born, Deck seems consumed with a guilty, belated reaction to his earlier attempt to "aspire". He has discovered Black Power several years too late, rails against "miscegenation", is careful to use black lingo with Ronnie and ultimately decides he must find himself a "decent" black woman. It is this counter-reaction that seems at the root of his rejection of Birdie.

It is important to note that Freire describes the desire to "aspire" as happening at a "certain point". No character seems locked into this mode of thinking. But most of the characters fall vicitim to at it at one point or another, to varying degrees.

The scene before Christmas (p. 269) in New Hampshire is one where this can be seen at work in Birdie/Jesse. She realizes she's finding a "Strange solace" in the white world. Denis's racial slurs (hierarchy; stereotypes of the other enforced) makes things "seem clearer" to her. Birdie is obviously guilty over her acquiesence and "tries to tell herself" it's (giving in to becoming/passing-for white) all "make-believe" a game she must maintain to protect her mother...